Allan Massie is a Scottish writer who has published nearly 30 books, including a sequence of novels set in ancient Rome. His non-fiction works range from a study of Byron's travels to a celebration of Scottish rugby. He has been a political columnist for The Scotsman, The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph and writes a literary column for The Spectator.

Of course Nick Clegg should write a novel. Too many politicians confine their fiction to their memoirs

Nick Clegg has revealed that as a young man he embarked on a novel under the influence of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He wrote 120 pages before abandoning it because it was, he says, “shockingly bad”. Well, to get 120 pages into a novel is more than many of us manage in our twenties, and our aborted youthful efforts may well have been every bit as bad as Mr Clegg says his was. However, he would still “love” to write a novel – and why not? Perhaps he will do so once the Coalition is behind him.

It’s not surprising if many politicians have a hankering to write novels; after all they spend much of their working life making up stories. Think of Jeffrey Archer whom his publishers routinely describe as “the master storyteller”. Some might say he was never a serious politician, despite having been a member of both Houses of Parliament and Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. Others might add, sneeringly, that they can’t take him any more seriously as a novelist. But his books sell and sell and go on selling.

The prince of novelist-politicians was of course Disraeli, whose own life was a glittering and improbable Romance: how did a bisexual Jewish boy, who wore his hair in ringlets and sported velvet jackets and gorgeous waistcoats, become leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister, with no advantages but intelligence, such as Tories usually distrust, and a cutting wit? If his early Society novels are unlikely to be read by anyone except scholars now, his three “Condition of England” ones – “Coningsby”, Sybil” and “Tancred” – are outstandingly good. People still quote from them – the passage about England being Two Nations, the Rich and the Poor, and the observation from one of the political managers that what we need is “Tory men and Whig measures” – a neat description of the Coalition to cheer Mr Clegg up? Disraeli remained a dandy to the last: “When I want to read a novel, I write one.”

As far as I remember Churchill is the only other Prime Minister to have written and published a novel. I read “Savrola”, a Ruritanian romance about a coup d’etat or revolution in an unnamed Balkan country, with some enjoyment when I was fifteen or so, but have no desire to read it again. Other Prime Ministers such as Lloyd George, Harold Macmillan and Tony Blair have contented themselves with writing memoirs, not, admittedly, without the occasional excursion into fiction in their "recollection" of events.

Lots of other politicians have however yielded to the temptation of fiction. Roy Hattersley has written novels, though I haven’t read them, and so have Edwina Currie (steamy stuff) and, in the present parliament, Louise Mensch (as Louise Bagshawe). Going further back, the Labour MP, Maurice Edelman, wrote some rather good political novels in the Fifties and Sixties, and another Labour MP, Wilfred Fienburgh, who died young, wrote an admirable and enjoyable one about the corruption and downfall of an idealistic Labour MP, “No Love for Johnnie”. It was made into a film starring Peter Finch, and Geoffrey Wheatcroft has called it the archetypal example of “the Labour Party novel of disillusionment..”

On the other side of the fence, as it were, there are novelists who have strayed into politics: John Buchan, MP for the Scottish Universities before becoming Governor-General of Canada”, C P Snow, a junior minister in the first Wilson Government; A E W Mason, author of “The Four Feathers” and some good, if now dated, detective novels, was a Liberal MP, and so, for one parliament was Hilaire Belloc, not admittedly usually thought of as a novelist, though he wrote novels as well as much highly imaginative history.

Mr Clegg says he is still passionate about reading novels. So one may hope that he may indeed write one when freed from the cares of office. If he does, I would advise him to eschew Latin American-style Magic Realism and stick to the world of Westminster, Strasbourg and Brussels. And surely there are other politicians with time on their hands who might essay the novel? Lord Mandelson, for example, has shown a talent for spinning a tale. A murky saga involving Russian oligarchs, Jewish bankers, and a trustingly ambitious, slightly spivvy, young Tory is surely within his capabilities. If he is doubtful, he might ask his friend Robert Harris to ghost it for him.